Will Aldridge
Well-Known Member
I decided it was time to come out of the closet with this project.
History:
The idea for this plane has been around for several years predating the start of my Corsair/Spitfire hybrid thread. The general idea has remained constant since I came up with it. A small composite aircraft with inverted elliptical gull wings and h-stab with a mustang-esque vertical tail. Version 1.0 had a 200+ hp Subaru conversion with retractable gear that I hoped would go 300+ mph. Eventually common sense won out and I knew I'd never be able to afford the $30,000 engine and it was more airplane than I am capable of piloting. The above linked thread begins after I enlarged the wing and tail and swapped the Subi for a Corvair but I left the retracts. So that was version 1.1. Common sense again won out and the retracts went away and a Mazda Rotary was introduced along with the final profiling of the fuselage that added a touch of Fw-190 to the cowl and canopy and took advantage of the ability of composites to created a compound curved fuselage. Below is a screen cap of the 3d model with the paintjob that I anticipate will be applied to the finished aircraft. For other details on the design see the thread.
Construction:
I started building about a year and a half ago and progress has been very slow due to my working out of town and only being home for 1 or 2 weekends a month. And I'm very slow otherwise, so don't expect frequent progress reports.
The fuselage shell is made up of .5 inch thick divinycell using 2" wide strips. My laptop with pictures for the first year of the project was stolen in February so you will only see a few of the shots taken since then.
I cut fuselage cross sections out of blue foam and placed them at 1 ft intervals and then planked the 2" wide strips of foam onto the forms. When I first started applying the micro to glue the strips together I would remove a strip and butter the edges with the micro and replace it. Didn't work to well so I ended up using Duncans stitching method.
The following pics show the fuselage from the longerons down sitting upside down on the table with a hardshell of micro applied and joggles cut into the foam with a planer. I set it too deep in some spots so i will have to go back and fill in the trenches I cut in some spots. The firewall is 3/16" baltic birch ply. What you see here is roughly 14.5 feet long.
Winter is coming here in Idaho and it is too cold to work with epoxy in an unheated shop. I do have another space that I can build some of the smaller parts in but the fuselage will be hibernating till late spring.
History:
The idea for this plane has been around for several years predating the start of my Corsair/Spitfire hybrid thread. The general idea has remained constant since I came up with it. A small composite aircraft with inverted elliptical gull wings and h-stab with a mustang-esque vertical tail. Version 1.0 had a 200+ hp Subaru conversion with retractable gear that I hoped would go 300+ mph. Eventually common sense won out and I knew I'd never be able to afford the $30,000 engine and it was more airplane than I am capable of piloting. The above linked thread begins after I enlarged the wing and tail and swapped the Subi for a Corvair but I left the retracts. So that was version 1.1. Common sense again won out and the retracts went away and a Mazda Rotary was introduced along with the final profiling of the fuselage that added a touch of Fw-190 to the cowl and canopy and took advantage of the ability of composites to created a compound curved fuselage. Below is a screen cap of the 3d model with the paintjob that I anticipate will be applied to the finished aircraft. For other details on the design see the thread.
Construction:
I started building about a year and a half ago and progress has been very slow due to my working out of town and only being home for 1 or 2 weekends a month. And I'm very slow otherwise, so don't expect frequent progress reports.
The fuselage shell is made up of .5 inch thick divinycell using 2" wide strips. My laptop with pictures for the first year of the project was stolen in February so you will only see a few of the shots taken since then.
I cut fuselage cross sections out of blue foam and placed them at 1 ft intervals and then planked the 2" wide strips of foam onto the forms. When I first started applying the micro to glue the strips together I would remove a strip and butter the edges with the micro and replace it. Didn't work to well so I ended up using Duncans stitching method.
The following pics show the fuselage from the longerons down sitting upside down on the table with a hardshell of micro applied and joggles cut into the foam with a planer. I set it too deep in some spots so i will have to go back and fill in the trenches I cut in some spots. The firewall is 3/16" baltic birch ply. What you see here is roughly 14.5 feet long.
Winter is coming here in Idaho and it is too cold to work with epoxy in an unheated shop. I do have another space that I can build some of the smaller parts in but the fuselage will be hibernating till late spring.
